Re: [RFC PATCH 1/4] mm: madvise: read loop's step size beforehand in madvise_inject_error(), prepare for THP support.

["Zi Yan" <zi.yan@sent.com>]

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On 23 Aug 2017, at 3:49, Naoya Horiguchi wrote:

> On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 09:52:13PM -0400, Zi Yan wrote:
>> From: Zi Yan <zi.yan@cs.rutgers.edu>
>>
>> The loop in madvise_inject_error() reads its step size from a page
>> after it is soft-offlined. It works because the page is:
>> 1) a hugetlb page: the page size does not change;
>> 2) a base page: the page size does not change;
>> 3) a THP: soft-offline always splits THPs, thus, it is OK to use
>>    PAGE_SIZE as step size.
>>
>> It will be a problem when soft-offline supports THP migrations.
>> When a THP is migrated without split during soft-offlining, the THP
>> is split after migration, thus, before and after soft-offlining page
>> sizes do not match. This causes a THP to be unnecessarily soft-lined,
>> at most, 511 times, wasting free space.
>
> Hi Zi Yan,
>
> Thank you for the suggestion.
>
> I think that when madvise(MADV_SOFT_OFFLINE) is called with some range
> over more than one 4kB page, the caller clearly intends to call
> soft_offline_page() over all 4kB pages within the range in order to
> simulate the multiple soft-offline events. Please note that the caller
> only knows that specific pages are half-broken, and expect that all such
> pages are offlined. So the end result should be same, whether the given
> range is backed by thp or not.
>

But if the given virtual address is backed by a THP and the THP is soft-offlined
without splitting (enabled by following patches), the old for-loop will cause extra
511 THPs being soft-offlined.

For example, the caller wants to offline VPN 0-511, which is backed by a THP whose
address range is PFN 0-511. In the first iteration of the for-loop,
get_user_pages_fast(VPN0, ...) will return the THP and soft_offline_page() will offline the THP,
replacing it with a new THP, say PFN 512-1023, so VPN 0-511 is backed by PFN 512-1023.
But the original THP will be split after it is freed, thus, for-loop will not end
at this moment, but continues to offline VPN1, which leads to PFN 512-1023 being offlined
and replaced by another THP, say 1024-1535. This will go on and end up with
511 extra THPs are offlined. That is why we need to this patch to tell
whether the THP is offlined as a whole or just its head page is offlined.

Let me know if it is still not clear to you. Or I missed something.

>>
>> Signed-off-by: Zi Yan <zi.yan@cs.rutgers.edu>
>> ---
>>  mm/madvise.c | 21 ++++++++++++++++++---
>>  1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/mm/madvise.c b/mm/madvise.c
>> index 47d8d8a25eae..49f6774db259 100644
>> --- a/mm/madvise.c
>> +++ b/mm/madvise.c
>> @@ -612,19 +612,22 @@ static long madvise_remove(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
>>  static int madvise_inject_error(int behavior,
>>  		unsigned long start, unsigned long end)
>>  {
>> -	struct page *page;
>> +	struct page *page = NULL;
>> +	unsigned long page_size = PAGE_SIZE;
>>
>>  	if (!capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
>>  		return -EPERM;
>>
>> -	for (; start < end; start += PAGE_SIZE <<
>> -				compound_order(compound_head(page))) {
>> +	for (; start < end; start += page_size) {
>>  		int ret;
>>
>>  		ret = get_user_pages_fast(start, 1, 0, &page);
>>  		if (ret != 1)
>>  			return ret;
>>
>> +		page_size = (PAGE_SIZE << compound_order(compound_head(page))) -
>> +			(PAGE_SIZE * (page - compound_head(page)));
>> +
>
> Assigning a value which is not 4kB or some hugepage size into page_size
> might be confusing because that's not what the name says. You can introduce
> 'next' virtual address and ALIGN() might be helpful to calculate it.

Like:

next = ALIGN(start, PAGE_SIZE<<compound_order(compound_head(page))) - start;

I think it works. Thanks.


--
Best Regards
Yan Zi

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